Former Dream Theater vocalist Charlie Dominici has kept himself relatively exiled ever since his departure from Dream Theater 15 years ago. After a special reunion show with Dream Theater, Dominici returned to music with his own band simply called Dominici. Starting with the acoustic solo album “O3” in 2005, Dominici has now moved back in the neighborhood of progressive metal with “O3: A Trilogy – Part 2” in 2006 and now finally we have his latest offering “O3: A Trilogy – Part 3”.

Musically this album is not very innovative, as it has all the trademarks of prog/power metal. The album is sometimes reminiscent of Symphony X and Dream Theater although not as complex, as this album has a straight forward approach to each song. The songs are mostly simple, without much improvisation, but nonetheless the band excels in great musicianship, as this never sounds cheesy or dated. The band offers a nice mixture of heavy metallic rock and more melodic moments. Highlights of the album include album opener “”King of Terror”, “March Into Hell” and “Liquid Lightning”. The more mellow parts of the album come in the form of “So Help Me God”. The peak of the album though comes midway with the progfest “The Enemies of God”; the most ambitious and risky track of the album that ultimately pays off. The rest of the album has its good share of chunky riffs and intricate drum parts that really the album higher and maybe make it stand out just a bit.

Now, my problem with Dominici is, well, Dominici himself. Even though you can tell by his performance there’s a lot of soul and effort behind his performance, his range as a singer is just no wide enough to bring the music to a higher level, therefore the band relies more on music than anything else to become more appealing. Not only is Dominici’s voice not strong enough, his lyrics lack enough hooks to make the songs memorable. Overall this is a worthy and remarkable, albeit mediocre, progressive album that should please most fans of the genre and and good step in the right direction for Charlie Dominici, but theirs is still a lot more room for improvement.